By Ellen J. Staurowsky, Ed.D., Senior Writer and Professor, Sports Media, Ithaca College, staurows@ithaca.edu
In Schroeder et al. v. University of Oregon, the issue that men athletes are treated not just better than women athletes but are given royal treatment is contemplated as part of an overall pattern of discrimination that deprived women athletes of equal athletic scholarship assistance, equal treatment, and equal access to participation.
Background
On December 1, 2023, women athletes in the sports of beach volleyball and rowing filed a class action lawsuit against the University of Oregon accusing the institution of a sweeping set of Title IX violations. On the surface the lawsuit presents a narrative that the university has treated its women athletes as second-class citizens by failing to provide equal treatment, equal athletic financial aid, and equal participation opportunities. The issues as described speak not simply to a persistent pattern of discrimination. As noted in the complaint, “Plaintiffs are suing Oregon for depriving women of equal treatment in its varsity athletics program because Oregon has been and is treating its varsity male student-athletes shockingly better than its varsity female student-athletes” (Schroeder v. University of Oregon, p. 5).
Stark Differences in Treatment Between Men and Women Athletes at the University of Oregon
Title IX’s Regulations as put forward in C.F.R. section 106.41(c) delineate that institutions are expected to provide equal treatment and benefits to men and women athletes in nine areas that some have referred to as the Title IX athletics “laundry list”. These represent operational areas of expenditure that support participation in varsity athletics including equipment and supplies (this includes uniforms and attire); scheduling of game and practice time; travel and per diem allowance; opportunity to receive coaching and academic tutoring; assignment and compensation of coaches and tutors; provision of locker rooms, practice, and competitive facilities; provision of medical and training services; provision of housing and dining facilities and services; and publicity. The OCR Policy Interpretation on Title IX and Intercollegiate Athletics issued in 1979 further clarified that investment in recruiting athletes and the manner in which athletes are recruited was also part of a Title IX analysis.
Based on claims in the complaint, the contrasts in the treatment of men and women athletes at the University of Oregon are quite striking. In the area of equipment and supplies, men athletes have access to more and better equipment and uniforms. To appreciate the magnitude of this, baseball players at Oregon are given each year at least one glove that is customized to their liking and includes a monogram. They also receive matching practice shirts; cold weather gear; and multiple sets of socks. At the end of each season, players are permitted to keep the items they have been issued.
For the men athletes on the football team, their equipment and uniforms are sized to their individual physical specifications. In order to facilitate this, the football equipment room has a fitting room where players during pre-season “are measured and sized for shoes, pants, jerseys, pads, and all other equipment”. As documented with photographic evidence and explained in the complaint, “This room includes a throne and was based upon a tailor shop in the popular movie franchise, the Kingsman.” (p. 63).
Beyond the personalized nature of the attention given to the equipment and uniforms the football players wear is the quantity and quality. Members of the football team, whether they are on scholarship or not, “…receive new gear four to six times each season, including six unique football helmets for their twelve games, six jerseys, six pairs of pants, multiple pairs of cleats and socks, four pairs of sweatsuits, pads, and arm sleeves” (p. 62). As is the case with the baseball players, football players too are afforded the opportunity to keep their equipment at the end of each season. Further football players do not wont for access to equipment in the event special circumstances arise, should they need an additional sweatshirt to work out in or forgot something. Men athletes can rely on the equipment room to supply them with what they need.
Such is not the case with the women who compete on the varsity beach volleyball team at Oregon. The time and attention given to the outfitting of men athletes with the resultant tailoring and personalized looks provided to each stands in sharp relief to what is described as the “gear drop” for women athletes. This is the day at the beginning of each year when beach volleyball players are issued a generic set of gear which “…includes three t-shirts, two sweatshirts, one thermal sweatshirt, two pair of leggings, a raincoat, a pair of sunglasses that has to be returned at the end of the season, one pair of shoes and one backpack” (p. 65). Gear worn by women golfers and indoor volleyball athletes have been shared at times and used to outfit members of the beach volleyball team. Beach volleyball players do not get to keep their uniforms but are expected to return them at the end of the season, a situation that highlights the fact that beach volleyball players do not receive new uniforms every year as men athletes do in the Oregon program.
Uncomfortably, and concerningly, women athletes in the Oregon program have been asked to share spandex shorts and due to the mismanagement of laundry services for women athletes, there is no system in place to return what each athlete wore to them after those are laundered. A very different system exists for men athletes where the gear they practice and compete in is identified and returned to them.
This pattern of discriminatory treatment runs through each of the other areas of treatment, none more troubling than the quality of the venue the beach volleyball players are expected to practice and compete in. Without a venue on campus, the beach volleyball players travel often at their own expense to Amazon Park, run by the City of Eugene. As a public park, women athletes have had to play in unsafe and unsanitary conditions. Due to the park serving as a site for drug users, the athletes have found discarded drug paraphernalia. To discourage vagrancy, the available bathrooms have had the doors removed, creating significant privacy and safety concerns. These are not issues that any of the men athletes at the University of Oregon face when practicing, competing, and training in their sport.
In the area of sports medicine and athletic training, the women athletes report that they do not have athletic training support during their practices and the team members are assigned to transport injured players to emergency medical facilities and/or they wait for an athletic trainer to arrive on scene to assist when an injury occurs. According to the complaint, the beach volleyball team is given a medical bag but has to consult YouTube videos to learn how to appropriately tape up their peers in the absence of athletic training staff.
There are myriad other shortfalls across all of the treatment areas. Football players fly to games in chartered planes while beach volleyball players rarely have access to flying anywhere and will more likely travel in a van driven by their coach while they hold their luggage on their laps. Lavish locker rooms with player lounges and a barber shop are not available for beach volleyball players. Scheduling of strength and conditioning sessions often are timed right before practice, resulting in beach volleyball players leaving their sessions early to get to practice or arriving late to practice. Such conflicts are not a part of the men’s athletic experience at Oregon. In the area of support for coaches, large and well-appointed offices and meeting rooms are features of the football program that do not exist within the women’s program. No coaches of women’s team, for instance, has access to a hot tub facility exclusively for their use as it exists in the football facility. The football facility also includes a 150-seat theatre where team meetings are held which also doubles as a place where the team gathers to watch movies and sporting events while sitting in seats upholstered with Ferrari leather. While abundant provisions are made to ensure that men athletes have access to food that supports and enhances their training efforts, the beach volleyball players often struggle to eat healthy food. The beach volleyball players allege that they have been told by coaches not to accept assistance from parents when they are at events or to let on about the nutritional concerns they have.
The Financial Gaps in the Treatment of Women Athletes at Oregon
The financial investment in women athletes and women’s athletics at the University of Oregon is consistently less than that for men athletes. Even when the nature of different sports is taken into account (meaning that a football team will have different equipment and uniform needs than a cross country team), the patterns of differences in expenditures between the men’s and women’s athletics teams are vast. As a case in point, the head coaches of men’s teams at Oregon have historically earned more than six times that of head coaches of women’s teams over the span of nearly twenty years. Levels of compensation affect the recruitment and retention of coaches. As noted in the complaint, the University of Oregon failed to retain their highly successful women’s softball coach who had taken the team to two consecutive College World Series appearances and a Pac-12 championship. After the University of Texas offered to nearly double the starting salary from approximately $237,000 to $505,000, the coach was told by administrators at Oregon that they did not have the resources to match it. This was at a time when the average salary for a men’s head coach in the Oregon athletic department was $1,077,792. The inequality found in the compensation of head coaches at Oregon was also reflected in the compensation of assistant coaches. In 2021-2022, assistant coaches of women’s teams at Oregon were earning on average $87,155 while assistant coaches of men’s teams were earning an average of $403,172.
In terms of the investment in recruiting top athletic talent to the University of Oregon, there is a wide gap between expenditures spent recruiting men and women athletes. During 2021-2022, Oregon spent on average $8,593.96 to recruit individual men athletes. They spent on average $1563.53 to recruit each woman athlete.
When it comes to the allocation of athletically-related financial aid, trends demonstrate that men athletes have been favored over time in violation of Title IX. Shortfalls to women athletes over a five-year period between 2017-2018 and 2021-2022 deprived women athletes of over $4.5 million. As per the lawsuit, “Oregon has not asserted or attempted to demonstrate any justification for its failure to provide female student-athletes with equal athletic financial aid that does not reflect underlying discrimination…” (p. 100). Although beach volleyball players were reportedly told that athletic scholarship assistance would be forthcoming if they went to Oregon, that promise went unfulfilled.
Oregon Falls Short in Offering Equal Access to Athletic Participation Opportunities
The standard for determining whether a school is in compliance with Title IX requirements in the provision of athletic participation opportunities is the three-part test. Schools have the option of demonstrating that the number of athletic participation opportunities offered to women is proportional to the representation of women in the undergraduate student body. Absent that schools need to demonstrate that they have a history and continuing practice of program expansion. Failing the first two parts of the test, schools can argue that they are fully and effectively accommodating the interests and abilities of women athletes on their campus with the varsity sport programs offered.
The University of Oregon fails the three-part test. Between 2003-2021 the Oregon athletic department never provided proportional athletic opportunities to women athletes. Over the past decade, the number of participation opportunities has remained relatively stable (stagnant). The last time the athletic department added a women’s team, which was women’s beach volleyball, was in 2014. And there are women’s club teams, like women’s rowing, that could be elevated to varsity status, thus foreclosing the argument that the athletic department has fully and effectively accommodated all of the women who have an interest in competing at the varsity level. Women’s rowing is positioned as a sport that could be elevated to varsity status and address the gap in participation opportunities for women athletes.
The Promotion and Publicity of Men and Women Athletes at Oregon
In the era of college athlete endorsements, where athletic departments are providing educational opportunities for athletes to develop their personal brands and profit from the use of their names, images, and likenesses, Oregon created two resources to support athletes. One was an NIL collective referred to as Division Street, considered one of the most successful collectives in the country. While athlete rankings done by one media outlet ranked three Oregon football players among the top 100 athletes in the country in terms of endorsement deals, the Plaintiffs contend that there are no women athletes at Oregon who have received endorsement compensation that is anywhere in the vicinity of what the top men athletes are earning. In the case of the beach volleyball team, the fact that the athletic program provides so little publicity to their program and NIL support is reflected in the sparsity of earning opportunities for them.
Final Thoughts
The response from the University of Oregon may provide a fuller picture and/or offer a glimpse into their defense of the patterns that are revealed in the lawsuit. Will they attempt to argue that the gaps found in spending and treatment are not the result of gender discrimination? Or will Ashley Schroeder and the other 31 women athletes who filed this complaint prevail in their efforts to hold Oregon accountable, to realize a remedy where Oregon pays them for the damages that have accrued as a result of being deprived of equal treatment and equal athletic financial aid, and to effectuate a change at Oregon that results in administrators running the athletic department in accordance with what the law requires?
As a matter of context, it is interesting to think about the implications of this case in light of the fact that Title IX was passed more than 50 years ago. One of the people most responsible for the passage of Title IX was Edith Green, a graduate of the University of Oregon who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1955 to 1974. Representative Green was the first to propose the Equal Pay Act in 1955 to ensure that men and women were paid equally for their work. Her concern that students have access to education unfettered by gender discrimination was central to her work in supporting the passage of Title IX.
References
Ashley Schroeder et al. v. University of Oregon. United States District Court District of Oregon Eugene Division. Case No.: 6-23-cv-1806. (2023). https://www.baileyglasser.com/media/news/15171_University%20of%20Oregon%20Title%20IX%20Complaint.pdf
